Holiday Press 2014

Who Makes This Blog?

ARTIST PROFILE | Not one to toot my own horn too much (even though I played a mean trumpet long ago in high school band), the recent interview by Darian Glover of The Tree Topper blog got me to talking about what makes this blog tick. If you've always been curious about the method behind the madness, here's what drives The Decorated Tree.

King of the Forest?

KUDOS FROM MATTHEW | Matthew Mead , noted style expert with his own inspiring holiday titles , which I've been lucky enough to be included in two years in a row (2012 and 2013), highlights my top ten trees on his beautiful blog while creating a new moniker for me: King of the Forest. Think it fits? Check out the post on my top ten trees here .

The Decorated Tree's first tree: The Alpine Feather Tree now here!

NEW WINTRY TRADITION | Introducing The Decorated Tree's Alpine Feather Tree, now available for purchase! Two versions of this heirloom-quality goose feather tree are handmade stateside by Dennis Bauer for Hometraditions.com. Have a gander at all the many feather and tinsel options on the Hometraditions site here, Order yours now, as each tree is made as orders arrive. See it decorated in this post.

BLURB.COM STAFF PICK | The Decorated Tree book gets decorated! Click the cover below to peruse a thumbnail of the whole book!

Buy Your Copy Today!

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ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE | Matthew's newest holiday bookazine is available now and The Decorated Tree's Alpine Feather Tree makes its decorated debut within its pages! Matthew Mead is a stylist, writer, author, photographer, lifestyle editor, and noted style expert. You can also find an abbreviated magazine version on newsstands everywhere, but t.d.t. recommends buying the expanded bookazine on Amazon.com .

Ornament Finds

STOCKING FEAT | My friend David Schump is a consummate folk artist who creates these tramp art stocking ornaments paying homage to the age-old tradition. They are stained and washed with metallic gold and hung with antique German tinsel garland with care. A vintage Dresden star at the top completes it. This is a limited edition of 12 pieces, so hurry and get yours. Available through his website The Art Tramp, alongside other beautiful masterpieces. Be sure to poke around his site for other wonderful handmade gifts made from the heart.

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VINTAGE GLAMOUR | For the person who means the world to you, Eliot Raffit creates this beautiful vintage globe, now in four color schemes (original, ivory, noir and sage). With the fine craftsmanship of European workrooms, his collectible ornaments are created to last for generations to come. Using the finest glass glitter, beading, metallic threads and chains, his ornaments include snowflakes, globes, hearts, and more. Each ornament is tied with double-faced Italian satin ribbon, ready for hanging. Available in stores at Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys New York, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Available online at Eliot Raffit's website.

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HEARTMAN | Tintown in South Africa makes delightfully well-designed "hanging decorations" that will bring a smile to anyone's face this holiday season. If you bend over backward for love's song, this is the one for you. Poke around their website for lots of wonderful creations, but you'll find your very own "Heartman" here.

click below to go home

t.d.t. picks:

THE GIVING TREE | I recently rediscovered this book a thoughtful friend gave me a few years back. Author Shel Silverstein's poignant tome about the life-long relationship we all have with trees is a classic parable of the selfish versus selfless choices we all make throughout our lives—a true classic, first published in 1964 (Harper Collins).

LIVES OF THE TREES | Diana Wells, author of Lives of the Trees has written an uncommon history of 100 types of trees. It's fascinating reading that writes our long history and sometimes unusual connections with our most stately earthly friends (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill).

THE TREE SHOW | "Arcadian Gothic" artist Mark Ryden's fascinating exploration of the arboreal world is layered with references ranging from Renaissance landscape and Neoclassical portraiture to pop-culture kitsch. Several of his paintings are finished with elaborately-carved wood frames that extend the narrative beyond the canvas. "The Tree Show" series of art is reproduced alongside Ryden's meticulous research on the tree as myth. This book is available here on Amazon.com and a Special Edition Exhibition Book is available at Porterhouse Fine Art Editions, Inc..

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PAPERIE PANACHE | My friend Gia (a.k.a. Betsy White) has a scrumptious line of cards, invitations and such. Click to her site for this valentine and poke around for more! And be sure to check out her gorgeous blog: Flights of Fancy.

Monday, March 11, 2013

A REFRESHED state of mind after the dreary months of winter is what spring brings to all of us. "How appropriate—Easter’s focus on rebirth, celebration, growth, and forgiveness. That’s just about where you’ll be when it gets here," my coworker Yvonne Green offered up after wishing me a great weekend of renewal while stating how nice the weather was finally going to be. She prefaced these words with "It’s a beautiful Friday and it’s going to be a fabulously, gorgeous weekend. Do at least one thing each day to love yourself."LOVING YOURSELF is the hardest lesson to learn, especially when your focus is on loving others. It could be argued that the selflessness of loving others is also loving yourself, but it's not really the same thing when you think about it. Loving yourself is a more conscious effort because you have to look inward. And everyone knows that if you love yourself, then it's easier for others to love you. That's my mission this spring. It will be a time of rebirth, celebration, growth and forgiveness, both for myself as well as the people that I love. And the only way it will happen is if I start the process within.WHETHER YOU ARE religious or not, spring's promise as heralded by the Easter holiday is definitely a universal theme that spans across many belief systems. The truth lies at the core of the thought process in combining the words that I am pointed to and forming thoughts around them. As always, creating a new tree and thinking about what to write for my post is my meditative process, of sorts.

EASTER BLING | These fancy crackled mercury glass eggs with rhinestone-studded metal caps make Easter an elegant affair. The eggs were bought at TJ Maxx. The other foil-covered eggs are by Martha Stewart for Grandinroad from a previous season. A better-quality egg-shaped goose-feather tree similar to the one above can be found at Hometraditions.com.

REBIRTH. This is a biggie. This means shedding all the stuff that once seemed so life-giving or that only temporarily filled a void and forcing yourself to take that first deep worldly breath again. It's easy to become reliant on the people you have grown to love and it is easy to take them for granted. Nurture these relationships and find fresh new ways to enrich them.CELEBRATION. If this tree doesn't say that, I don't know what does. The egg theme is not happenstance around Easter. It is the most resonant symbol for new life there could be. An egg-shaped goose feather tree emphasizes the theme. And everyone knows that the shiny metallic eggs are always the the ones containing the prize!

PETER COTTONTAIL | In a market filled with cartoonish Easter bunnies, this Peter Cottontail is a well-dressed relief—I found him at Homegoods. The Easter Surprise glass-glittered egg container was a beautiful gift from a friend a few years back and is an original design by Wendy Addison for Tinsel Trading in NYC, New York. And sweet yellow daffodils are placed in the shot in memory of my father.

GROWTH. With any birth or rebirth, the growth process begins for the first time or once again. The miraculousness that Mother Nature brings in spring gives us proof all around, from the bulbs that spring out of the ground, to the budding trees and flowers that abound. Spring is all about new growth.FORGIVENESS. This is as hard a lesson in life—maybe harder—than learning to love yourself. Forgiveness is something that releases the very core of energy within all of us to find a new purpose. It literally clears the clutter in our minds and hopefully in our physical lives and makes room for more love. After all, love is the life force within all of us. It is the feeling that is produced when we are closest to the divine. That is why it is so highly sought after and sits on the fence between pain and joy. It's up to us most of the time to decide which side of the fence we want it to fall into.

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PRIZE EGG | This goose
egg-sized mercury glass egg embellished with fancy rhinestone accents is a
prize in itself—found at TJ Maxx
a few years ago.

THANKFULNESS. I continue to thank all the people that find resonance in the words and photos that I put together for this blog. I'm sensing a new direction and maybe less attention will be paid to it as I clear the way for a future unencumbered by my past—literally and figuratively. This blog has always been a catharsis for me to move through some very tough times in my life and make something beautiful out of it—to find the joy by putting it out for the world to see. And they do. Just today, I've had visitors to my blog from all around the world (Stateside from Kansas, Oregon, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, Ohio, Massachusetts, Alabama, New Jersey, California, New York; and worldwide from Canada, Germany, Tunisia, The Netherlands, The Russian Federation, and even way down under in Australia). What my blog might morph into now remains to be seen. There may not be as many posts or they might just change focus (showcasing collections comes to mind) as I attend to things in life that have been pushed to the forefront and to clearing the clutter from underneath it. Know that I will find a way to keep it all interesting. This is my creative outlet after all.

TREE BASE | This heavy ironstone container is traced with vines and leaves and makes the perfect spring container for this elegant tree. The small handmade ceramic vessel, holding pale speckled malted milk eggs was made and given to me by my good friend Jamie Callen Sells.

SPRING FORWARD. This Daylight Savings Time business throws everyone off kilter because we start our days earlier in the spring. I would prefer at its outset to keep Standard Time in accordance with the natural rules of our planet. Even so, life is still a forward-moving process. We can look back, but we can't dwell on the time that we have lost. We can still carry that forward with us as our judgement found in discerning the new things that come our way and making the best of them in the longer and warmer days ahead.